Can We Pretend I'm Bob Marley?
by Axcent
Summary: Matt has a friend he can rely on when Mello's gone, and he's dreadfully, devastatingly in love.


Happy Christmas.

M for hints of sex, drug use, and mild violence.

Can We Pretend I'm Bob Marley?

_And the sex, and the drugs, and the… complications. _

The bathroom floor. An old friend, something that never left your cheek if you stayed sprawled on it long enough and left you with a bruise so you would keep it in your memory, and the cupboard so you would always want to come back, and the bathtub so you could feel clean when you were dirty and the toilet for leaning over and gagging when you decided never to lie across the bathroom tiles again.

The bathroom floor was always there, whether he was kneeling and spilling the nothingness of his stomach in his ripped jeans and feeling it cold and hard on his ripped knees or sitting with his back to the wall and a lighter and some lemon juice and water and a bag of the most beautiful thing in the entire world, a hypodermic needle and an arm for sliding it into and a thought that washed away. And the withdrawals and the highs and the neediness were there on the bathroom floor, with the door locked and solid and a good barrier from the outside world when consciousness was still lurking.

There was 5 mg in the first bag, the first time, when the internet had been a guide and the needle had made him wince and everything became other worldly and then the next time had been good, and the next time had been good, but it wasn't the same and the dealer was handed another wad of cash and there was 10 and 20 and 30 and 40 mg and now there was 750 a day, and he couldn't remember much about the living room carpet, but the bathroom floor was a good enough friend that he could forget about the carpet, who he had broken ties with since he discovered something better, and it was the bathroom floor.

There were little diamonds of white and little spots of water damage and all sorts of interesting things to look at.

There had been a time, when he had been feeling greedy and the money was dripping away and Mello had come home, like he never did anymore, and a bruise on the cheek and a snapping of tongues and hundreds of dollars wasted, spilt out through the living room window, and sense pushing its way into his head like a battering ram and then there was the bathroom floor, not as beautiful, but supporting his body as he went through hell and then came back and looked at himself and his ratty hair and the bags under his eyes and the jut of his cheekbones and the shirt sliding off his right shoulder and the lines all the way down his arm, one vein over used and abused, moving on to the next, again. Mello had said he was disgusting, what an idiot, Mello made money selling drugs to addicts like him, Matt bought them and had a block of mouldy cheese in the fridge and a half eaten cheese sandwich on the counter and nothing to say for himself.

Mello said, Matt, quit; stop doing the fucking heroin. Mello had put him through the first withdrawal, and it had been painful and Matt had felt like an insomniac and a bulimic and a million things he had never wanted to be.

But then Mello had left in black and gleaming rosary and delicately messy hair and angry smirk and gun in his pants and a warning, Matt, if you ever fucking do this again, I swear to God…

Left open, the threat, so the possibilities could run themselves all over Matt's head, and he could say hello to the living room again and then grow weary and bored and miss the high and hate the feeling of being alone, and call that man who tells him, yeah, I'll still sell to a valued costumer. Matt's valued somewhere, and it's at that man's house, where he picks up so much heroin he could swim in it if he wanted too, if he shrunk back to the size he was when he was shooting it.

The bathroom friend is as welcoming as the dealer, and it forgives his absence and lets him stretch out across it with a foot pressing into the toilet and an arm over his head, talking to the light about something very important and worthwhile, while the needle is pushed into an old vein that hasn't tasted the heroin in a while and he forgets about what the withdrawal is like and how Mello's threat could be devastating, forget that, no time to think of that.

He locks the bathroom door because Mello might come home, and Mello doesn't like the drugs.

Mello used to share a cigarette with Matt once in a while, and the nicotine was nice, in a soft, legal sort of way. Mello used to sit on the couch and put his chin in his hand and dream like a dreamer and keep Matt company, so there was no reason to have any other friends. But then Mello decided he needed to spend all his sweet time in a building with his Mafiosi's and his chocolate bars and he never touched a cigarette when he was there, and he started saying Matt should quit them too, because there were more important things to buy.

Like missiles.

But then there was the weed, and the weed was better than the nicotine, and then one thing led to another and he was taking 5 mg a day and now things had gotten worse and he was spending so much time with the floor he thought it might be his best friend, like Mello had been.

A crash, a swear, and a slamming door and Mello is back, and Matt's stroking his precious bathroom floor with a gloved hand and his eyes are red like blood and his sleeves are around his elbows and the streaks go up or down or something, but he doesn't know which, and he's wondering where the floor ends and where it begins, if there is an ending or a beginning, and his high is over, time for more, because he feels low now and he can hear the doorknob go _rattle rattle_.

Mello's saying "Matt, what the fuck? Let me in." But Mello abandoned Matt like Matt abandoned the living room floor, so maybe now Matt's moved on and he and the bathroom are going to marry and be in love forever and ever until he dies or the bathroom dies, whichever comes first.

Then the door is hit particularly hard and it opens _boom_ and Mello's standing there _glare_ and Matt's laying there wondering about Mello and his glare and sitting up groggily and yawning because he hasn't slept in a while, and sleep might be a good idea.

Mello doesn't think so, with darkening eyes and swinging hair and a swinging fist that lands on Matt's cheek again, and a muttered "You fucking idiot."

The bathroom floor comes rushing up to meet him again, and he knows how this goes, hello, bathroom, catch me, I'm falling. He can feel Mello over him, hitting him, pulling him up by the hair, spitting in his face and talking at the same time and dragging him away from the bathroom and into the kitchen, where there are grocery bags full of lemon juice and Matt gets to watch them go _glug, glug, glug_ into the sink and away from him, bye. Then Mello looks back at Matt, who's leaning on the counter and bleeding from the nose and all down his shirt and looking as bad as Mello thinks he looks, even though Mello is a very good exaggerator.

"Wish I could dump you down there too." Mello growls and pushes Matt stumbling back onto the kitchen floor, where he sat when he smoked the weed, all those many decades ago. Mello's kissing him then, straddling him, sucking on his bottom lip, tasting the breath of a junkie, and it tastes terrible, but with the shirt gone, the sights, the sounds, the twang of blood, it gets better. Matt reaches to undo Mello's zipper, and lets everything happen, lets Mello do this, and it doesn't make sense and it never made sense, not since the first time they shared a cigarette and not since the first time they shared a bed, because Mello doesn't usually share.

Reaching, touching hands, because friendship is a notion that was taken and twisted and swallowed alive by a blonde in leather, and now friendship means sex by the sink with the drawer above them open slightly and never being there and caring about Matt's health but only barely, no weakness, no feeling. Trying not to feel and knowing that this is fucking everything up because after, they'll be standing there and then they won't know what to do, when they're not being completely and terribly irresponsible. Irreparable would be a fitting word for this, when Mello wraps his arms around Matt's neck and bites him along the jaw and growls deep in the throat.

Matt fell asleep some point after, still on the kitchen floor, and Mello got up and left and bought groceries and then sat on the couch with a sigh and a glance at the sorry excuse for a human being dozing a few feet from him, a sight without the clothes and with the scars and the house that doesn't smell like smoke anymore, and no box of cigarettes in sight, only a television without a picture and a controller without any hands clutching it, like there used to be. There's nothing like coming back to an empty house and a fucked up friend. He could shoot him now, put him out of his misery; that might be an okay move.

Or he could stay, but of course, that didn't cross his mind. He never could have guessed that Matt liked having him around, when he was hitting and pulling hands over heads and pushing people into walls and shooting everything that moved, he couldn't have guessed that Matt would like having him around; he didn't like having himself around anymore.

So then he went back to the mafia again and left a note telling Matt to eat everything in the fridge and came back home to the redhead in the bathroom again, only an hour later, giving himself his last few milligrams for the day, leaning his head back and closing his eyes, and Mello couldn't take it, so he pulled his gun and told that boy he was ready to put down his dog, tired of watching it suffer, and Matt didn't have any objections, but the gun went back in its place and Mello half dragged Matt out of the bathroom and put him on the couch and made himself something to eat and went to bed, leaving Matt to work off his high and discover the lack of heroin in the cupboard, and do with that information what he wanted.

What Matt wanted to do with that information was wake Mello up at somewhere near 3 am and hit him upside the head and cry softly and then turn around and run out of the room and into the hallway, where he wanted to bang his head against the wall, because the lows and the withdrawals were the worst, and he knew what was coming, and it was Mello's fault for taking away what he wanted most, and when Mello was your friend again, you couldn't have other friends, like heroin or bathrooms.

The bathroom floor is cold and angry that he's abandoned it and the cupboard is sad and empty and the toilet didn't miss him, as he places his forearms over it, a few hours after Mello kicked him in the chins and told him never to fucking wake him up again and wandered back to bed. Matt was feeling like he couldn't move anymore with sweat down his brow and tears clouding his eyes and a hopeless life, and he should just curl up and die because nothing is worth it, and he sobs on the couch and curls up and closes his eyes and shivers, and then Mello wakes up and ignores him and makes some coffee and says something about how it serves Matt right, but Matt doesn't feel right, Mello, make some semblance of sense.

But then Mello's sitting on the couch, right there next to him, with a mug in his hands and a glower in his eyes and a hatred in his head, with his booted feet up on the coffee table and his bare arms lifting and bringing the coffee to his lips and his mouth taking a sip, and Matt blinks blearily and remembers how he used to depend on his morning caffeine. He's always been dependant on something, and suddenly he misses the innocence of that mug and no sugar, no cream, just pure something to get him by.

He reaches a hand, pleads with his blood shot eyes, and Mello hands him that cup, and let us go back to that time when I drank coffee and you stayed by my side, and for three hours, fourteen minutes, and twenty two seconds, Matt sits on the couch and Mello sits on the couch and they make that coffee last, and then a call, _ring ring_ in Mello's pocket, and he says goodbye, breaks the moment, and there's a bottle of lemon juice in Matt's room and a bag of powder behind the fridge, and one up in the ceiling fan, where Matt used to hide them, when he used to be ashamed, and he finds them, and Mello sits on the Mafia couch and clutches his rosary and his gun and Matt sits on the bathroom floor and clutches his spoon and his lighter and they both practise their twisted religions.


End file.
